Today I am thankful for the sign painters brush.
Years ago, when I was just 17 I began working in my uncles sign shop. Lettering trucks, vans, paper signs, banners. Virtually every letter painted was in bold or normal Helvetica. This meant that two things had to happen; First of all you had to have a steady hand. This only came from practice. Get out the white pages telephone book and use the columns to practice vertical and horizontal lines, over and over and over.
Secondly, you had to have sign painters brushes. These brushes have significantly longer hairs than oil brushes or even watercolour brushes. So you learned to paint long steady lines by palleting your paint and mixing it with thinners.
After a a few years the repetition of sign painting became a bit ununteresting to me. I moved to pictures.
To this day I attribute most of my brush strokes to the methods of brush work used in those early sign painting years. In fact I still employ sign painters brushes into some aspects of my oil painting.
Thanks to James Reid of James Signs and Roz Reid who gave me the time and exposure to the world of sign painting, I never knew then how valuable it would be to me to this day.
Robert
Years ago, when I was just 17 I began working in my uncles sign shop. Lettering trucks, vans, paper signs, banners. Virtually every letter painted was in bold or normal Helvetica. This meant that two things had to happen; First of all you had to have a steady hand. This only came from practice. Get out the white pages telephone book and use the columns to practice vertical and horizontal lines, over and over and over.
Secondly, you had to have sign painters brushes. These brushes have significantly longer hairs than oil brushes or even watercolour brushes. So you learned to paint long steady lines by palleting your paint and mixing it with thinners.
After a a few years the repetition of sign painting became a bit ununteresting to me. I moved to pictures.
To this day I attribute most of my brush strokes to the methods of brush work used in those early sign painting years. In fact I still employ sign painters brushes into some aspects of my oil painting.
Thanks to James Reid of James Signs and Roz Reid who gave me the time and exposure to the world of sign painting, I never knew then how valuable it would be to me to this day.
Robert
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